Nick Southgate

Cool Hunting

Nick Southgate was born in an unremarkable part of South London where he grew up in an unremarkable way. He went to Durham University in 1991 where he was seduced by philosophy. After many years of study and teaching he emerged at the turn of the century with a Ph.D. on the metaphysics of personal identity. He then traded in communicating very complex ideas to a very small number of people for communicating simple ideas to millions by joining Ogilvy advertising.

Despite devising campaigns to make people pay their tax and listen to Radio 2 more he couldn’t shake the philosophy bug and wrote a version of Descartes’ Meditations for market researchers and a paper on Aristotle & The Notion of Cool. The latter paper was the beginning of the quest that culminated in his approach in teaching those who want to know how to be cool.